Tencent Wins Two Financial Innovation Awards From The Asian Banker

June 15, 2017

HONG KONG, June 15, 2017 — On June 8th, Tencent was awarded “Best Innovation Centre by Non-Financial Institution in China” at The Asian Banker: The Leadership Achievement Awards Dinner 2017, in Singapore. Mr. Jim Lai, Vice President of Tencent and Head of Tencent Financial Technology Department was awarded “The Asian Banker Innovation Leadership Achievement for China Award.” The Asian Banker presented these two prestigious awards to Tencent, leading the company to become the first and only internet company to ever win these two highly acclaimed awards. This is testament of China’s efforts in utilizing technological innovation to benefit society.

“The Asian Banker Innovation Leadership Achievement Award” is an important award of The Asian Banker, the renowned Asian Pacific financial journal. It emphasizes the importance of visionary leadership in pioneering industry development. The financial community also views the award as being the most recognized award in the Asia Pacific banking industry. In 2009, Mr. Zhou Xiaochuan, the Governor of the People’s Bank of China was awarded “The Asian Banker Leadership Achievement Award” in recognition of his excellent leadership in handling the 2008 financial crisis.

The achievements of Chinese financial technology companies have been receiving much attention from the Asia Pacific banking industry. The judge panel believed that Tencent’s financial technology team combined the company’s digital payment products, such as its Chinese New Year red envelop gifting service for WeChat and QQ users, with its financial application products, such the wealth management service platform “LiCaiTong”, and its financial technology developments, such as block chain, to propel Tencent’s rapid growth in digital payment and online wealth management. Tencent’s mobile payment solutions served more than 600 million monthly active users as of 2016.

In September 2015, the Tencent Financial Technology Department (Tencent FiT) was officially established. In less than two years, Tencent FiT formed close links with the financial services industry, built daily life application examples for consumers, and developed on areas such as digital payment, financial application and block chain, innovatively.

At the same time, Mr. Jim Lai also won “The Asian Banker Innovation Leadership Achievement for China Awards.” Mr. Lai joined Tencent in 2009 as Manager of the QQ Membership Department. He was promoted first to General Manager of Tenpay in 2012, and then to Head of the Tencent Financial Technology Department in 2015. As Mr. Lai stated, “Nowadays, digital payment and financial technologies are changing people’s lives surprisingly fast. With the help of social networking apps WeChat and QQ, consumers are able to pay with their digital wallets without the need to carry hard cash anymore. Be it in first-class cities or remote areas, digital payment can be used everywhere. WeChat has over 900 million monthly active users while QQ has over 800 million. With the help of WeChat Pay and QQ Wallet, you can enjoy fast and convenient services, including credit card repayment and Go-Dutch, as well as phone card top-up and taxi booking, wherever you are in China.”

In recent years, the “Internet +” has brought changes to all kinds of industries. The digital payment landscape of China has developed very rapidly, while the trend of integrating finance and technology has also accelerated. This in turn has pumped vitality into China’s as well as Asia Pacific’s financial businesses. With the more prevalent use of the internet and a reduction in the digital gap, financial and technological innovation will stand to benefit many more users.